Global Domination

Thursday, June 9

I don't know how I did it, but I got to work on time. Despite having had little to no sleep. I even managed to get there on the bike, which is very healthy indeed. I worked solidly until 7.30pm. This is something that's possible when there's a bike in tow, as you don't have to worry about parking tickets and there's a good reason to work an extra 30 minutes - it delays getting back onto the bike and cycling up a great big sodding hill!

I had officially broken something in the software we were working on. Not only was it broken, but it was of vital importance. So I'm important. I can smash important stuff. Sadly I also had to fix it. I will, ultimately, fit it a whole lot better. For now, though, it had to be put back the way it was so that it worked.

After work, I zoomed off home in order to beat some workmates who were due to come over and look at what could be done about the mini that sits on my drive. One of the guys was the owner of the mini. His thought was that he might be able to bump start the mini against its locked on brakes, thus making it possible to move it, thus making it possible to tow it away or something. I thought that it sounded like a plausible plan.

I arrived home and sweated a lot. Then I put the oven on for some low fat chinese food that I intended to eat. The guys arrived just as it was nearly ready.

We huffed and we puffed, but the car wouldn't start. Actually, we didn't blow on it. We connected a battery and tried the starter motor. I'd spent about 20 minutes inflating the tyres of this car by foot pump while on the phone to my girlfriend. To a casual observer it might have seemed like an obscene phone call as I huffed and puffed down the phone (that's where the huffing and puffing came from) - you'd be amazed how physically demanding foot pumps can be. However, we never even came close to needing inflated tyres. What a waste of time.

With a starter that wouldn't work, we did what men would normally do under the circumstances, we took some of the car to bits to see what would happen. When this got tiresome, we stopped. Then I decided to throw out two old TVs and we decided, as men do, to smash them up first, wondering whether they'd hilariously explode if shattered by, say, having a hammer thrown at them. This laddish amusement was amusing, and laddish, and followed up by a trip to my utility room for swarfega - the hand cleaning substance for real men. Men who work on cars. Men who smash TV screens with hammers.